Buyer demand down year on year
The latest figures for Q1 2024 show that 19.1% of new-build homes listed for sale across Britain’s major cities have already found a buyer, marking a slight annual decline of 0.1%.
Southampton is the city with the highest level of new-build buyer demand, with 44.6% of properties already being snapped up.
Demand is also impressively high in Bournemouth (36.4%), Portsmouth (27.6%), and Sheffield (27.3%).
However, it was Newport in Wales where buyer appetite for new-builds saw the largest annual jump, up 16.4% on the year, followed by Sheffield at 9.1%.
In contrast, Plymouth has seen the biggest drop in demand of all 20 cities analysed by easyMoney, with demand down 11.8% year on year.
Quarterly demand sees a boost
Despite the overall picture showing an annual decline in new-build demand, the quarterly figures suggest that the sector could be on the verge of a boom as we move further in 2024.
Across all 20 cities, new-build demand is up 1.8% since Q4 2023, with demand growing by 21.6% in Newport, 14.7% in Sheffield, and 5.8% in Southampton.
Stock levels remain stagnant at best
The latest figures found that new-build stock levels have also fallen during the first quarter of 2024. Total new-build stock accounted for 7% of all market listings, marking an annual supply drop of 0.5%.
The nation’s strongest new-build stock supply has been found in Liverpool (13.8%), followed by Manchester (13%), Aberdeen (9.5%), Edinburgh (9.1%), and London (6.2%).
As for change in stock levels, Manchester leads the way with annual growth of 2.2%, followed by Southampton (1.8%), and Liverpool (1%).
Nottingham (0.5%) and Swansea (0.1%) are the only other cities to have seen an annual increase in new-build supply.
The biggest annual stock reduction has been recorded in Birmingham (2.7%).
Britain’s stock levels are down on the quarter as well as the year, having fallen by 0.4% since Q4 2023.
easyMoney chief executive Jason Ferrando says: “We’re seeing positive signs that buyer demand is returning to the new-build market after a couple of difficult economic years, but it seems that a recent quarterly boost is not enough to ease the mind of housebuilders who are continuing to keep their cards close to their chest until they can have utmost confidence that demand is strong enough to justify opening the tap on new-build supply.
Confidence is riding high in the UK property market at the moment. It has weathered a difficult storm and come out of the other side largely unscathed, so as the market starts to bustle into Spring and Summer, we fully expect new-build supply to start increasing.”
